We wanted to do the lovely walk up to the meadow at San Giovanni from Ceriana today, so we set off in reasonable time for a midday walk, allowing for a stop down in the valley where I could connect up and get my updating done with a faster connection. All looked OK to start with, but with 2700 records to update and each record taking an absurd 5 seconds, things soon turned grim. After realising it was going to take too long, I gave up and we headed up the next valley to the west to Ceriana, where we stayed 3 weeks last time. A little disconcerting considering the walk we hope to do, to see two good-sized snakes squashed on the road up to Ceriana.
We had both been expecting to find it a bit grim and tired, but were pleasantly surprised that it was brighter and more cheerful than our memory of it. Maybe leaving it on a cold, pouring day in 2009 didn’t help. I had always thought Ceriana would be a good place to buy into, as it is close to the sea, has reasonable facilities, but is currently still cheap. Someone else must think so, as a nice new café has opened on the main street – the fourth.
We parked our car and headed through town up to the track. The first part was fine, though part of it had flooding damage, but partway up we came to an area where there had been a major area of slumping, and the track had disappeared. We hunted around for a bit, tried some other new tracks, but couldn’t find what had happened to the main track, which is one of the major tracks in the area and normally marked with red/white paint blazes. Most disappointingly, the sky to the west turned black and thunder started booming through the hills, so we thought better of our plans and headed back down. We’ll give it another try before we leave, as the walk is superb, and the meadow at the top will be lovely with springtime flowers.
Coming back, we went through the lanes, stairs and tunnels of the old village and again found it more cheerful than we remembered. I think if we’d bought here, as we got close to last time, we would have enjoyed it. However, it is crystal-clear that Céret is a better buy, with vastly more on offer, better transport, and simply far nicer. We think it will also make a far better exchange option once finished.
Back at the coast, we had largely escaped the black clouds so stopped off at Bussana’s beach for an attempt at sunbathing, though it was in the end rather thwarted by the clouds following us down the valley. However it was interesting watching a huge front-end loader and a bobcat loader with a gridded scoop trying to level a new load of sand on the beach and sieve it for stones. Finished the day off with a pastis and a beer at the local Montalto bar, which perches 100 metres above the valley, with incredible views up, down and across. The Italians take their gardening seriously. Below is one house’s garden with a dozen large terraces covered in perfectly tended plots of all kinds of veges and fruit trees. Some serious effort it must have taken.
